About a year and a half ago I wrote what I intended to be a little booklet that set out one principle per page, just a few bullet points … ten principles in all … based on my past experience consulting to organizations about work, workers and management/leadership development.
I find myself wondering if I could work it up into a ChangeThis manifesto. What does anyone think ?
I’ll post one per day for the next 10 days anyway, just to keep the stuff fresh. While it may seem obvious to some, and overly “democratic” to some, I’m pretty sure that this is what many many workers think and want (or some variation thereof … witness the sustained success of Dilbert).
Principle # 1
Customers, employees and other stakeholders are all interconnected, and have access to most, if not all the information that everyone else has
This fact has large implications for any organization. It means that you can’t hide – anywhere.
Michael Schrage of MIT puts it very succinctly:
Networks make organizational culture and politics explicit
It’s essential, in this interconnected age of instant accessibility to information and knowledge, that as a leader and manager you are aware of the potent force that is contained in networks of connected information and people.
The implications are clear.
People have to understand and believe in what an organization is doing, why the organization is doing what it does, and how it’s doing it.
The messages have to be clear and believable, and the culture that carries out the organization’s mandate and mission has to be flexible, responsive and open.
Fear and cynicism, being driven to perform – as opposed to being invited to contribute your best – can’t carry the day.
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January 13, 2005 at 9:39 am
Anonymous
No question you ought to work this up into a ChangeThis manifesto–this is good stuff. Keep ‘em coming!
January 15, 2005 at 8:42 am
Anonymous
First, about the project. Great idea to do this, Jon. Clearly “Change This” quality thinking.
Second, about the content of Principle #1. The inadvertent transparency that accompanies the creation of a network (inadvernent because it is a side effect, almost always unanticipated and often unwanted) is an example of what Tom Barnett is talking about when he speaks of the difficulties “vertically oriented systems” have with the content that flows through connectivity. Systems create connectivity for many reasons and then find themselves coping with the explicitation of material (what Schrage called culture and politics) it would rather have left concealed. Oops! The system’s reactions to those revelations then say much, much more about its true intentions than leadership proclamations ever could.
Hiding is one of the things that organizations have learned to do best. TrueTalk is one of the things they’ll have to learn to do better in this century.
Looking forward to more.